TCS to hire 60K employees this fiscal, says Cyrus Mistry

Mumbai: Country's largest IT services firm TCS today said it will hire 60,000 people this fiscal and impart training to its existing one lakh employees in various digital technologies. The software exporter is also ramping up investments in the digital solutions space.

“Digital is a key stream for us going ahead. We are investing in training all our people. This year, we will be training 1,00,000 people in terms of various digital technologies,” managing director and chief executive N Chandrasekaran told the shareholders at the 20th AGM here.

The company had earlier said it was targeting to take revenues from the digital space, comprising social, mobile, analytics and cloud to USD 5 billion in a few years.

Chandrasekaran, however, today declined to give details on the progress on this target, citing the silent period ahead of the June quarter earnings.

Chairman Cyrus Mistry said TCS will be hiring 60,000 people at the gross level this fiscal. It had hired 67,000 people last fiscal and had earlier said it would be hiring 35,000 freshers from campuses in FY16.

On the high attrition level of 14.9 per cent in the company, Mistry claimed that TCS' attrition level is lower than the industry, but was quick to add that a high attrition is a sign that the IT sector is doing well.

TCS, which has over one lakh women employees among its total workforce of over 3.14 lakh, has a higher attrition of 15.4 per cent among women employees, Mistry said.

To a question on retrenchments, the chairman said obsolescence is due to change in technology has not resulted in any job losses and added the “involuntary attrition”, which had resulted in a controversy a few months back, was due to performance issues of the past.

Mistry also said the involuntary attrition numbers are small and same as previous year.TCS, which receives only about 6.5 per cent of its revenues from the home market, hopes to benefit from the government's flagship initiatives like ‘Make in India' and ‘Digital India', which lay thrust on information technology.

The Tata Group company is already the largest technology provider to the Central government, Mistry said, citing the work it does on projects like passport issuance and filing of tax returns.

On recent reports surrounding troubles it is facing in the US on the H1B visas, Chandrasekaran told reporters that such various audits happen on a regular basis and TCS is compliant with all the regulations.

With the new Companies Act making it mandatory for companies to spend 2 per cent of their net profit on corporate social responsibility projects, Mistry said TCS will endeavour to achieve the targets and make sure it chooses the right projects, which will impact the society positively, adding that in fiscal year 2015, as many as 8 lakh people benefitted through its CSR spending.

Answering the demand from many shareholders for bonus shares, as given by its rival Infosys, Mistry said it can be done only when the company is sure of having the right revenue streams where the capital can be utilised well.

On the impending implosion in Greece, Mistry said the company does not have any significant exposure to the troubled Mediterranean island nation and will not be impacted by any eventualities there.

However, for the company Europe is its second largest market after the US, which may impact in case Greece exits the Eurozone and the ECB hikes interest rates.

Chandrasekaran said the Tata group company is building its own intellectual properties and cited the recent launch of the artificial intelligence solutions dealing with neuroscience as one such effort in the direction.

The city-headquartered company, which had earlier this year said that it will be hiring 1,500 in the digital vertical, is also focusing on partnerships with research institutions and universities in this aspect, he added. Chandrasekaran conceded that TCS is facing headwinds in the Japanese market, where it has done a joint venture with Mitsubishi Corporation, but stressed that the investment is long-term.

“It is an investment we've made from a strategic point of view and with long-term growth in the Japanese market in mind. Japanese market has been very slow for the IT industry and we hope to grow there in the years to come,” he said.